Tag Archives: Catholic Social Teaching

David Russell Mosley

Ordinary Time
13th Sunday after Trinity
The Edge of Elfland
Hudson, New Hampshire

Dear Friends and Family,

As many of you know I have, over the last few years, become particularly interested in things like Catholic Social Teaching, localism, agrarianism, some aspects of the artisan movement (at least insofar as it represents a return to making things ourselves and usually by hand or using less mechanized means of production), etc., in short that I have become interested in distributism. This is much to the chagrin of some I know, but all I can really say is that it is my faith that has led me here. I don’t say this to judge the faith of those who have not come to at least similar ideas (I know many committed Christian socialists with whom I agree on several issues as well as many committed Christian capitalists with whom I agree on several issues), but just to say that my interest and increasing commitment to the ideals of subsidiarity and solidarity are an outflow of my faith and study. Now that preamble out of the way, I want to talk about distributism in C. S. Lewis.

I have finally gotten to That Hideous Strength in my Cosmic Trilogy re-read and have to say that it is increasingly becoming one of my favourites. Perhaps it’s that I’ve loved Arthurian legend for a long time now and Lewis gives me more of that; perhaps it’s the way Lewis was able to predict and counter the transhumanism of today; perhaps it’s that it is a fairy-tale for adults and I am an adult who loves fairy-tales. Whichever, or whichever combination, it may be, as I began to re-read this book I came across a passage the shocked me for I had forgotten about it. Towards the beginning of the book one of the somewhat unwilling protagonists of the story, Mark Studdock, is learning some uncomfortable truths about how he got his fellowship at Bracton College. As it turns out, an old colleague of his, Arthur Denniston nearly got the position. However, Curry, the Sub-Warden of the College notes that Denniston ultimately would not be a good fit.

“‘Yes,’ continued Curry, passing another train of thought. ‘One can see now that Denniston would never have done. Most emphatically not. A brilliant man at that time, of course, but he seems to have gone quite off the rails since then with all his Distributivism and what not. They tell me he is likely to end up in a monastery'” (17)

While the final sentence seems untrue given that Denniston is married with a child on the way, as we later find out, it is fascinating that even the Bracton group would not have liked Denniston for his ideas concerning labor, wages, food, etc. Of course, this passage should not have shocked me. I myself have preached a sermon where I quoted at length a later passage in the book where the resident skeptic in the group for good notes that all they seem to have done being not much more than “‘feeding pigs and raising some very decent vegetables'” (368). So, Lewis seems to have been a proponent of distributism like Tolkien, both of whom, of course, were indebted to G. K. Chesterton one of the founders, if you will, of the movement. Lewis’ distributism, however, becomes even less surprising when one considers the third chapter in part 3 of Mere Christianity, “Social Morality”.

In this chapter Lewis begins talking about a society which is based on the golden rule, “do as you would be done by” as he puts it. If you’ll allow me, I will quote at length a few passages from this chapter. In the first, Lewis is writing what he thinks the appropriate role of the Church in all this:

“People say, ‘The Church ought to give us a lead.’ This is true if they man it in the right way, but false if they mean it in the wrong way. By the Church they ought to mean the whole body of practising Christians. And when they say that the Church should give us a lead, they ought to mean that some Christians––those who happen to have the right talents––should be economists and statesmen, and that all economists and statesmen should be Christians, and that their whole efforts in politics and economics should be directed to putting ‘Do as you would be done by’ into action” (83).

In this first passage, Lewis is arguing against the notion that bringing about a Christian society ought to lay solely or even primarily (insofar as economics and politics are concerned) in the hands of priests and bishops (or whatever you may call your clergy). Instead Christian novelists ought to write novels, Christian economists ought to work on the economy, etc. This isn’t to say that our clergy or lay theologians ought to have no voice in this (for who else would provide the moral, theological, and philosophical framework on which our Christian society is to be built?) but that there’s ought not to be the only or final voice, that we need people not split in the interests or vocations but singularly focused.

Lewis goes on to argue for the New Testament understanding of society:

“All the same, the New Testament, without going into details, gives us a pretty clear hint [how paradoxical, a clear hint] of what a fully Christian society would be like. Perhaps it gives us more than we can take. It tells us that there are to be no passengers or parasites: if a man does not work, he ought not to eat. Everyone is to work with his own hands, and what is more, everyone’s work is to produce something good: there will be no manufacture of silly luxuries and then of sillier advertisements to persuade us to buy them. And there is to be no “swank” or “side”, no putting on airs. To that extent a Christian society would be what we now call Leftist. On the other hand, it is always insisting on obedience––obedience (and outward marks of respect) from all of us to properly appointed magistrates, from children to parents, and (I am afraid this is going to be unpopular) from wives to husbands. Thirdly, it is to be a cheerful society: full of singing and rejoicing, and regarding worry or anxiety as wrong. Courtesy is one of the Christian virtues; and the New Testament hates what it calls “busybodies”” (84).

Before anyone thinks Lewis is against welfare, it should also be noted that one of the key reasons everyone is to work is in order to provide for the poor through charitable acts such as almsgiving (86). Of course, once a society such as the one described existed for long enough there ought to be few or no poor in it nor around it, as the charity reached further and further out. Also, note Lewis’ paradoxical nature, on the one hand no one is to think him- or herself better than another, yet we ought to properly obey and respect those who are better, in some way, than us. One can see, perhaps, a notion of the proper deference given to a member of the royal family or other such outward marks of respect at the back of this. In a sense, one is to think oneself as no better than another and to think others better than oneself.

Well, this missive has gotten too long and so I want to end with this. Lewis clearly liked distributism and tried to embody it (perhaps in another letter I’ll write about ways we can see Lewis attempting to live a distributist life). For Lewis, as for the Christians who “created” what we now call distributism, distributism is a way of living out the Christian faith, a way of living out the Golden Rule which Christ gave us. He believed it so much that he even worked it into his fiction like Tolkien and Chesterton before him and, in many ways, Wendell Berry and others after him.

David Russell Mosley

Eastertide
Ascension Day
The Edge of Elfland
City, State/County

Dear Friends and Family,

As various previous letters of mine have indicated, I am increasingly becoming swayed by the arguments of distributism. However, so many of you my friends and family don’t quite know what I mean when I say distributism. Now, it should be stated upfront that there is often not one definition of distributism, it has different expressions and slightly different emphases with different people or groups. Yet they all share a core and an origin and it is that I want to share with you now. Hopefully, I will do it justice and perhaps convince some of you to at least spend more time reading distributists as I have been doing when taking much needed mental breaks from my thesis (like right now).

Distributism, as the name would suggest, is about distribution, but distribution of what you might ask? Well, I’ll tell you, the distribution of property and by property, I mean land primarily. Distributism holds as its seminal text the papal encyclical Rerum novarum written by Pope Leo XIII on 15 May 1891. The Pope Leo, in this text, is writing concerning the woes of both capitalism and socialism. His concern is primarily with the working classes desiring justice for them as he writes: ‘Among the many and grave duties of rulers who would do their best for the people, the first and chief is to act with strict justice––with that justice which is called distributive––toward each and every class alike.’⁠1 The pope was concerned with the working man’s ability to own land. It is worth quoting him at length:

‘It is surely undeniable that, when a man engages in remunerative labor, the impelling reason and motive of his work is to obtain property, and thereafter to hold it as his very own. If one man hires out to another his strength or skill, he does so for the purpose of receiving in return what is necessary for the satisfaction of his needs; he therefore expressly intends to acquire a right full and real, not only to the remuneration, but also to the disposal of such remuneration, just as he pleases. Thus, if he lives sparingly, saves money, and for greater security, invests his savings in land, the land, in such case, is only his wages under another form; and consequently, a working man’s little estate thus purchased should be as completely at his full disposal as are the wages he receives for his labor.’⁠2

While the pope doesn’t specify to what end this land should be used in this passage, he has in mind that it is to be used toward self-sufficiency by the growing of fruits and vegetables and the raising of some little livestock (chickens, a few pigs, and/or a cow).⁠3 For the pope, the right to possess property is a natural right (one can perhaps see some Locke behind this, the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of property, which the Declaration of Independence altered to happiness, but I’m not sure the pope is following a Lockean line of thinking; I’ll need to study this more myself).⁠4 Much of the pope’s understanding here is based in the family as the foundation stone for society.⁠5 Society begins in the family and moves out from there, this gives the individual family a State-like status. Again to quote him at length:

‘A family, no less than a State, is, as We have said, a true society, governed by an authority peculiar to itself, that is to say, by the authority of the father. Provided, therefore, the limits which are prescribed by the very purposes for which it exists be not transgressed, the family has at least equal rights with the State in the choice and pursuit of the things needful to its preservation and its just liberty. We say, “at least equal rights”; for, inasmuch as the domestic household is antecedent, as well in idea as in fact, to the gathering of men into a community, the family must necessarily have rights and duties which are prior to those of the community, and founded more immediately in nature. If the citizens, if the families on entering into association and fellowship, were to experience hindrance in a commonwealth instead of help, and were to find their rights attacked instead of being upheld, society would rightly be an object of detestation rather than of desire.’⁠6

G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc are the two names that come up most often when one searches out information concerning distributism. These British men and Christians, along with others sought to put the pope’s ideas into practice in turn of the century England (and elsewhere, the Catholic Workers Movement in America founded by Dorothy Day is an American example of these same ideals). Through various writings and periodicals, many of which can be found at the currently dormant Distributist Review, these men and others sought to spread the sensibility of distributism. At the end of the day, this is what distributism is: a sensibility. It is not a political party nor even, strictly speaking, an economic system since it is more about a way of living. Chesterton believed that you could not impose distributism on people, you could only encourage them to live it. How does one begin to live it, though?

I think the answer to this must be incrementally. One must begin with the family. I don’t think it can truly begin at any smaller stage, individuals can do much, but this is an inherently social sensibility (Artur Rosman has written convincingly on the idea that the Church ought to replace the Family; and so one could suggest that the church, locally speaking, would also be a valid starting point). The family, and/or the church, ought to strive to live locally, to support local businesses, local farmers, and help local families get land on which to grow food. My wife and I, for instance, since we don’t even rent our own home but are living with family while I finish my PhD, have rented a 300sqft plot of land on which to grow our own fruits and vegetables. It’s our first time with a plot this large and we may very well fail, but beginning is almost more important than succeeding, at first anyway. From the family level one perhaps should move to the local community, your town or county encouraging locally owned businesses to come in and thrive, in general to encourage local-mindedness. Where it goes from there? I don’t know. But we must take the first steps.

If you have any interest in distributism, please do get in touch (especially if you happen to live near me in the greater Nashua area in New Hampshire) and in the mean time check out some of these online resources. I’ll likely be posting about this again as I will be having several discussions with friends and strangers who have an interest in or are even already proponents of distributism (to those for whom this will mean something, I will be meeting with Dr William Edmund Fahey, president of Thomas More College of Liberal Arts here in NH soon to discuss Chesterton and distributism).